Today is Children’s Day, so Happy Children’s Day, children all over the world! This day is also a reminder that children are our future. We must educate them and offer them the best start in life we can. There are so many schools for children all over the world that have awful conditions, but education must be available to all. Today, we pay tribute to all the children who helped change the world. We’re going to present you four children who changed the world we live in and made it better.

Louis Braille (1809-1852)

Louis Braille was born in Coupvray, a little village in France. His father had a crafts shop. When Louis was three, he tried to cut a piece of leather with a sharp tool and injured himself. He lost his right eye and soon after, his left eye became inflamed. At the age of 5, Louis Braille was blind. Back then, blindness meant total social exclusion, but his father taught him how to read by guiding his fingers on wood with nails. He became the best child in his class and, in 1821, he learned the night writing system which was used by the French Army. The system was made up of raised points and dots, but it was a complicated system which Braille simplified. Louis Braille presented his brand new code at the ripe age of 15 and published the first version of the Braille system in 1829.

Nkosi Johnson (1989-2001)

Nkosi was a South-African child who changed the world through his HIV/AIDS campaigning. He was born seropositive in a village close to DAnnhauser. He never met his father and his mother died the year he started going to school. The boy was adopted by Gail Johnson, a PR specialist, after his mother could no longer care for him. After he was refused by a primary school in a suburb of Johannesburg because of his illness, his voice was heard throughout the country and the constitution of South Africa banned medical discrimination. At the time of his death, Nkosi was the oldest living child born with the disease.

Malala Yousafzai (1997-present)

Malala was born in Mingora, Pakistan. When she was 11, she wrote to the BBC about her life under the Taliban regime and how the girls in her community are denied an education. In 2011, she was awarded a Peace Prize for her courage to speak up about her problems. This drew the Taliban’s attention who shot her in the head in October 2012. Surprisingly, Malala survived and is now living in the UK. She held a speech for the UN and said that she wouldn’t let the terrorists intimidate her.

Iqbal Masih (1983-1995)

Iqbal was born in 1983 in a little village outside Lahore, Pakistan. When he was four, his family forced him to start working in the rug industry, so that the family could pay back a debt of 16 dollars. He was working in chains, with other children, for 14 hours a day, six days a week. He only had a 30 minute break each day and weighed 27 kilograms and measured 1,2 meters. When Iqbal was 10, his slavery ended after forced child labor was declared illegal by Pakistan’s Supreme Court. He joined a front of forber forced labor victims and helped over 3,000 children regain their freedom. He started giving speeches thrgouhout the world about forced labor, but after he returned from a trip to the US, he was mistakenly shot by a farmer. He was 12 and many believe he was assassinated.